Representatives from various international Maritime Professional Societies joined the second part of the T&R Steering Committee meeting chaired by Rick Ashcroft at WMTC 2015. After a fruitful discussion about the possibilities for common technical and research efforts they decided to run a pilot project to explore options. The result is the decision to start an international T&R project on Autonomous Shipping. Details of what SNAME will do and how the Societies around the world will collaborate on efforts are not defined yet but will evolve as the effort unfolds. Several activities during WMTC provided fodder for the development of this project including Oskar Levander’s topical luncheon talk on Autonomous Shipping, discussions during the Panel on Marine Safety and Human Factors chaired by Admiral Card, various presentation sessions culminating with discussions during the Small Craft Track on Friday. The paper by Miller and ?? described elsewhere in this issue of TNT provided a lot of the basics on the issues and advances on achieving practical autonomous surface craft. Two T&R sessions followed the Small Craft track with the latter (T&R Session No. 309 on “Technology, Operations and Social Qualifications for Autonomous or Augmented Shipping” providing some specific discussion on initiatives and initial formation of plans. Peter Wallace from T&R Panel O-36 chaired this session and initial discussions of possibilities are now planned to start with early discussions of a working group to begin in January. Volunteer to help an look for much more to come on this exciting effort!